The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
The ability to monitor real time usage and availability of office desks, conference rooms, etc., has proven challenging. This is especially so with large office facilities. With large office facilities, there may be conference rooms or user work desks spread out over a large area.
The ability to monitor and track real time usage of such work desks and/or chairs within each conference room would provide valuable assistance to an entity in maximizing its furniture resources. Any system that could alert workers to the locations of available work desks which are vacant and available for use, in real time, would be especially useful and valuable. Being able to provide a running, real time utilization of all available desks, chairs and conference rooms in a large office setting would also be highly valuable.
Still further, since office chairs with casters are inherently more mobile than desks and other furniture items, a system which “knows” where each chair is located in a building would enable inventorying all the chairs in a given building. The ability to be able to detect if a user is present in his/her chair could also be highly valuable for enabling a receptionist at a switchboard to properly route incoming calls. For example, some form of display system which shows the receptionist whether an individual is present in her/his chair could be used by the receptionist to determine that an incoming call for a particular individual should be sent to the individual's assistant because the individual is not present in her/his desk chair. The ability to be able to monitor real time vacancy and occupancy of chairs and other furniture components such as beds would also be highly valuable in the health care field. Such a feature could alert management that an individual or patient is not present in her/his bed at a given time when the patient is expected to be present in bed or in a chair somewhere in a health care facility. In other applications, it may be highly valuable to monitor time spent by a patient in a bed for purposes of ensuring that the patient is being sufficiently ambulatory and/or to ensure the patient is re-positioned at required intervals to prevent complications from lack of circulation (e.g., bed sores). In a convalescent/nursing facility environment, these abilities would be especially valuable to health care workers and management.